Bootstrapped Web

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Bootstrapped Web. I'm Jordan. Brian, very nice to see you.

Nice to see you, buddy. Good to be back. Two weeks in a row. We did it.

I know. I know. We're back. We're back. It's the fall.

Gotta get back to work. That's right. I'm feeling very motivated these days. A little bit of travel this week to New York. Got a lot of travel coming up next week.

It's time to get things done.

That's right. You're you're not in New York right now though?

Nope. Back in Portland. But I was in New York for the first few days of this week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Cool. Yes.

Yeah. It is it is the fall time, but it is still pretty nice outside up here in Connecticut. I'm sitting out out in my backyard right now. That's why I might sound a little bit different than usual, but I'm just trying to enjoy the weather while it lasts. Because once it goes away, it goes away for a long time.

Yeah. That's alright. That's alright. Whatever it is, bring it on.

Yep. Ordered my iPhone eight this morning. Eight plus, actually, it should be.

Nice. I ordered a MacBook Pro for somebody else the other day. That's nice. Oh, yeah. Very cool.

Yeah. We're starting to do the company owned hardware thing. That's the safer way to go. So when we hire a new engineer, you you get a MacBook Pro. Not because we love you, but because we want you to work on equipment owned by the company.

It's easier for a whole bunch of reasons, security and so on.

Yeah. That's interesting. So how I always kinda wondered how remote teams handle that, like buying equipment for for employees. So what do you like, you just order it online, you ship it gets shipped to them, but it's owned by Cart Hook. Yep.

Then what what happens when they stop working at Cart Hook?

They send it back. It's not theirs. It's it's an IP issue. If you so we had an experience where we hired a developer and it didn't work out. So now when you let the person go, you're counting on their good graces to remove all of your IP from their hardware, which is not the idea.

Look, you're still relying on their good graces that they didn't copy it over, and that they're actually gonna send back the computer. Yes, like it's not perfect. The the quote perfect, the right way to do it is the next level up in enterprise functionality where you could turn stuff off, you could give access very carefully, it's but but that that's just a lot more expensive and a lot more to manage. And so we just don't do that yet, so we're doing the intermediary step where we now just buy the hardware, just buy a MacBook Pro, send it over and say this is your work computer, do we work stuff on here, our code stays on here. If at any point in time you decide you no longer want to work for this company, we decide we no longer want you to work for this company, you send this back to us because it's not owned by you.

The the least good is just having all of your code and full environment set up on someone else's hardware. The one step up from there is using your own hardware, and then the next step up after that is to be able to remotely manage access and rights and the ability to delete and lock out and all this other stuff. And if you go to the Apple store and ask to meet with a business manager there, they will give you all these different options. It's very educational actually.

Interesting.

Mhmm.

Yeah. I mean, guess but you're still like depending on, like you said, like, on their good graces. Like, they could just use their own personal computer if they want to. They could log in to git or or they can't.

Look. All of your employees. You Yeah. There's a there's a level of trust.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, I've been

I that's playing that Yeah. It's better for everyone to be honest. You know, in theory. But if if an employee screws you over, like that's gonna hurt their career too. So something like this, there's like this dance of like, okay, let's hope that no one does the wrong thing.

Yeah. I've been we don't give hardware to the team, but I do go through this whole process of onboarding a new employee, giving them access to all of the we're we're a remote company. So everything is, like, access to Google Drive, access to Trello, and to Slack, and to and, like, there's just, a whole checklist of things to, like, invite them to. And then when they leave, like, cancel their access to this stuff. Google has been the one that's really been, like, kind of confusing, and I I haven't really I gotta come up with a better solution for it.

It's probably gonna end up being, like, everybody gets their own, like, at audience ops, Google Apps email address or something, so that it's owned by that and not owned by the person's personal Google account.

So Exactly right. Yep. So, yeah, we've tried to do all that stuff for, like, you know, our Amazon account doesn't have a individual person's email address, it's a company email, and just all all that stuff is we we just really screwed up the first time we came across it, and then we're like, okay. We have to do a better job of that because up until then, we hadn't had any hadn't had any problems, but then we had to let someone go, and we just did it all wrong. We had to like lock them out of everything before they realized, and it's like that's just that's just not not not ideal.

Yep.

I don't have a ton of updates. I thought maybe today I would maybe run through a couple of quick questions that I have about ops calendar, things that I'm thinking through right around now and get your feedback on it, and we'll do that on the air. That that'll be, like, my side of the update, but what do you got?

Cool. I think from my side, I'll just talk about what we're what we're looking at and dealing with and and starting to think through. Yeah, I've done I've done a bunch of work on hiring, and a bunch of work on analyzing our finances, and making sure I have a really good grasp of where money's going and where it's coming in, and then that allows me to plan when we can hire, what we can afford to pay people, what impact one employee has financially where it's not just salary benefits, but it's also like the load on top of that of additional software. So I hired someone here in Portland to just do all that stuff. So it's, you know, now we're trying to trying to plan out more instead of just what's right in front of us.

It's more of the next six months or twelve months of play. So I I'll talk about that stuff. Very cool.

Well, should I start off?

Yeah. Sure. Go ahead.

So so I think I talked about this on last week's show that I was working on a big update to our marketing site. So that all that stuff is now live at opscalendar.com. The the look and feel of the site, like, design is not new. That that's all basically the same, but I added a whole bunch of new content to the marketing site. I reworked the homepage a bit, but then the main big thing is the tour section.

There are now, like, these five tour pages. One change that's new with the with the new version of the site is the call to action throughout the entire site. It's now requested demo.

I see that very clear upfront.

Yeah. So, like, up until now for the past almost the past year, it's it's been in, you know, prelaunch mode where the call to action was request an invite. And what that was was they just enter their email address. It that goes on to my early access list, and then it sent them to a survey. They fill that out, and then I manually kind of reply to their email, and then I'll manually, like, invite them to the app.

That's what I've been doing for the past year, and now I changed it to request a demo. I was going back and forth, and this is kind of my question is, my first thought was maybe I'll have both options. Like, you can sign up right now, go straight to our free trial sign up form on the app, or request a demo and just offer both options. My thinking right now in the currently live version is let's not show the the link to the sign up form. We'll just have request a demo.

That goes to a I don't know, fairly short form, like name, email, website, company, tell us what you're looking for. Then that goes to my calendar booking link. They book that, and then we do a call, and then I'll do a live demo with them, ask them about their workflow, show them the tool, and then I'll set them up. I'll I'll manually onboard them one by one myself. My thinking right now is, like, I'll keep it with this setup for the next couple of months.

A, because I wanna just talk to more customers. And b, the road map the feature road map. I wanna, like, like, wait until we build a couple of more really big features and fix a couple of kind of quirky bugs before I just let anybody sign up and have a bad first experience. And also, onboarding is almost nonexistent right now. So it's like, you know, I'd I'd rather kind of control, like, handhold the onboarding right now.

But I know that the request a demo button rather than the sign up right now button will probably limit the number of new trials we get through the funnel. So

I I love this approach when when a product is just getting started. It really worked for us for a lot of the same reasons. I think it's a conscious trade off, you will get less sign ups, but if you know it's not forever and that it has a larger purpose, and that's the mode that you're in right now. But I I know we did it because didn't really have the confidence in someone just signing up, not talking to anyone, getting started, getting value from it, and starting to pay. I just it just that just wasn't happening.

So we went backward. I think it makes sense for you to to do this. It is a conscious choice, you will get less sign ups. However, you get to control the relationship, and you get to learn. You you can create direct personal relationships, which make people more committed, it makes people more understanding of anything that comes up.

I love it. The the one thing I would I would question, what what we found, at least in our market, people don't really want a demo. And so that word demo, that might not be necessary to inject into the process. If if I were to go backward, I don't know if I would call it set up a demo because that has a certain connotation, and our market does not want to do demos, they want to do free trials. So you could just do a get started, but you get started But

that leads to a form.

Right. Step one in getting started is fill out this form, and I like that. Onboarding step one is a conversation to make sure we understand your needs, so it's less of a, you're gonna sign up for this appointment, I'm gonna sell you for forty five minutes, and then at the end I'm gonna ask you you know, pay me money. It might it might just change the relationship by changing that word demo because that has a very fixed connotation.

Dude, I love that. I'm gonna do that. I mean, that that makes total sense because and, you know, I haven't really seen that done that way, but but that makes total sense. It's literally just the change of a word or what you what you put on the button. And you're right because, you know, I know that like the request demo, request a demo, I think plays well when it's a higher priced kinda enterprise type of sale.

Because those buyers do typically go through a demo process, and they expect to have like a demo slash sales call type of experience. And I have another question about pricing, which we can get to in a minute, but somebody signing up for like a $39 a month SaaS, like if I'm if I'm signing up for a $39 a month SaaS, I don't wanna go to a demo. I wanna check it out right now, you know.

Right. So it it also what what we've talked about so far is the the idea puts in someone's mind of the process. What you and I are like the producers here, but when you're the consumer, you're also thinking about price. And so if you look at ops calendar and you're like, oh, this looks great, but then you see request a demo everywhere, a lot of times you're gonna associate, oh man, it's just too expensive. If if I need to do a demo, means damn, I can't afford it.

Yeah. Like I mean, I know that there are a lot of companies who just do request a demo and they don't even show the pricing, which that really just annoys me. You know? But I but I get it. Like, I I get what they're doing.

It's I would I I would at least hope that those companies would show, like, prices start at $500 a month. Yeah.

I hear I hear that. I

hear that. But yeah. Alright. Let's let's talk about pricing. So one change that I made was I moved the again, before, it was like a big one page website.

Now, it's like a multi page website. So now, I I moved pricing to its own dedicated page, opscalendar.com/pricing. It's more or less the same. Like, the ranges are basically the same, but I I did I've had a lot of feedback from folks in who who've gone through, like, the early access process on pricing that it was kind of missing a middle tier. I had a middle tier, but it wasn't fitting their needs.

So I tweaked the the pricing a bit. I I I made it a little bit simpler than from what it was before, but now now what it is and and I guess I'm I'm still a bit unsure about a, the just the price points in general, and b, what I'm including in each of these levels and how I'm matching up each of the three levels to our target customers. So, overall, it's a pretty typical looking, pricing tier structure here. I've got three tiers. I am offering annual and monthly billing.

The annual, of course, is a little bit cheaper on a monthly basis than the monthly. The way that I laid it out on the page, and I've gone back and forth on this, different companies do it different ways, but I'm showing the annual by default. And then there's a little pick picker up top. You could switch to monthly. And I'm laying out the pricing by saying, this is the monthly price when you pay annually.

So Yes. Think that's a lower number.

Like accepted, you know, best practice at this point.

I know it's, like, borderline, you know, misleading a little bit, but it's I don't know, it's it shows a a more attractive number. I don't know.

Yeah. And and it's not it's not a big deal. I I don't know. I I think it's fine. I don't see any major thing with that.

So I'm more questioning right now the actual price points and what's included in each tier. And so I named the three tiers solo, business, and pro. Solo is at $39 a month or $29 a month when billed annually. The idea is that it's it's only for you. You're you're a solo person.

Maybe you're a blogger. You're a solopreneur. You have one website to connect to your calendar. You've got maybe like a Twitter account and a Facebook account. So it allows up to three social profiles.

Pretty soon we're gonna have a feature where you can have like multiple content types like articles, podcast episodes, videos, and put and classify these in different ways on your calendar. This solo plan only allows for one content type, but you can have unlimited content on your calendar.

Yeah. One one kind of content type that's that's pretty that's limited.

Well, I should I should say, and this isn't totally clear, content type meaning like an article, but you could still have like tweets and Facebook posts. It's just that if you wanted to have like a another content type like webinars or videos, or let's say you have, like, a blog and a podcast, and you wanted to have those differently on your calendar, you you would have to upgrade.

Yeah. And it's And this is the starter plan.

This is the lowest plan. Yeah. Yep. Checklist templates is another big feature in the app where you can like

When we do more content, I want our content person to use Ops Calendar. And part of that is because I want to remove a lot of the questions and, you know, lack of process. I wanna get out of the way. So that way if that person works with us for eighteen months, and it's amazing we build up all these systems, and then they leave, we don't start from scratch that all this stuff is documented. Okay.

Cool.

Yeah. And so and it like automates a lot of the process where like you have these deadlines, especially, like, recurring deadlines for recurring content. If you move stuff around your content, those deadlines automatically adjust, using the checklist templates. That that's why that's pretty powerful. In the solo plan, you can only create one checklist template.

So you might wanna have, like, a template for articles and a template for videos and a template for like, a checklist template for webinars. But if you wanna have those multiple checklist templates, you'd have to upgrade. So solo plan, you only get one. And the other thing that you get in solo is WordPress integration. You know, like, two way syncing between your WordPress site and your calendar.

Moving up into the business plan, which is, $69 a month or $59 when paid annually. The the target for this is, okay, you have a team. Maybe you're working with a writer, a VA, another marketer, and maybe, like, a founder and a couple of partners. Like, I there are a couple of people involved in your marketing, not just one person. So it's you and up to three teammates.

In other words, there's four users in your account on on this plan. Yep.

I assume that is aimed at at a company like Cardhook. That this is what a business would be using. Yes. Because we're gonna have a bunch of different things and more than one person being able to log in and some so I find it curious that you didn't you didn't highlight that as like like the most popular or that that typical like mechanism that people use? I don't know if it's necessary, but

I don't know I don't know that it would actually be the most popular. I think the Pro will be more popular, which I'll get to in a minute. The other thing that I've heard from a bunch of people, and this actually applies to my to my personal UK use case, is if I have multiple websites that I wanna connect to the same calendar. So, like, I've got, like, a business site and a personal site, and I want both of those showing their content on the same editorial calendar for whatever reason. A bunch of people actually had that request.

And so you can't do that on the solo plan. You can do that. You can connect up to three websites to the same calendar in the business. You can connect a few more social profiles. Whereas content types were limited, now they're unlimited in in business.

Makes sense. If we're gonna pay for this, don't don't I kinda don't want anything really limited. I mean, five social profiles is is is a lot.

Yeah. And I think I forgot to list it here actually, but checklist templates will be unlimited. I said you you have up to five social profiles. This also adds a feature called social loops. So what you can do in the lower plan and the solo plan is you can schedule social posts in relation to your content.

So you have an article that's scheduled to publish two weeks from now. You can queue up some tweets and Facebook posts that will go out starting from when that article publishes, and that's the social queue. But the social loops feature is you can have a recycling recurring loop of, like, your best evergreen articles just looping once a week or once a month or, you know, similar to like what like Edgar or

Yeah. Buffer, that sort of thing.

Yeah. So so that social loops feature comes in, you know, you gotta upgrade to business to get that. Labels similar to like Trello labels that's in there. We're we're gonna have a Zapier integration that will be available only to the business, not solo. So that's kinda how I'm

cutting When I look at this, I I want to very clearly know that that business tier is is right for us. That we're gonna be able to pay you, use your tool, and not have that many limitations on the things that we just wanna do as a normal part of our business.

Yeah. Yep. As we go up to up to pro, early on I was gonna call this agency. Mhmm. But I decided to call it pro because I think there are some like, most of the users in this plan will probably be agencies, but there will be some business users who are, like, really, like, power users who fit more into the pro.

But why would they use this? At least in my mind, this tier has everything that the business does with features that you would use as an agency to like tell your customer, your client what you're doing on their behalf?

So the the the other big feature that I and this is a a quest an open question right now is, like, I added the Google Analytics integration and the reporting into Pro, and that and that's not available in business. Mhmm. Yeah. I was thinking originally that should probably go into business. Anyway, the the Pro is is priced at $99 a month or $79 a month annual.

Unlimited websites connected to the same calendar. That's not multiple calendars. That's just one calendar. You've got a bunch of websites for some reason. You can have up to five teammates per site, unlimited social profiles, so it's not limited to five.

And then this Google Analytics integration where you connect your Google Analytics, and then it'll show you the traffic and conversion goals on a post by post basis. You open up any article on your calendar, you can see those stats, and you can generate reports based on those stats and and I kinda compare all of your recent blog posts to see which ones performed really well. And and then I've got a couple more features that are really aimed at agencies like client feedback, getting client approval on stuff, sending out branded monthly reports to clients. So I'm I'm thinking I'm I'm on the fence probably Google Analytics needs to go down into the business tier. I

I think it does, and the reason it does is because as a customer, I'm a little annoyed, I mean, not really genuinely, emotionally annoyed, but it is is grading or whatever you wanna call it, that I have to move into a tier that's clearly not for me to get the to get the feature that I want. My my honest feedback like off the cuff is that the pro or agency tier should really be aimed at customers that are gonna use it on behalf of other people, and then the business tier is gives everything that a single business would need to get all the benefit from your product.

Yeah. And I think that's right. That's I'm probably gonna make that change today. But then it it it also becomes a question of the actual price points. The other thing that I didn't mention is that, if you wanna add additional users to your account that your plan doesn't allow for, it's 10 per user per month.

And if you wanna add additional sites, like a totally a different different accounts, like different calendars, $20 per month per calendar. So that's where agencies will start to grow their

Oh. Their

their so like so an agency would sign up for the $99 a month for their first site. And then if they're adding another client, it's another $20, another client, another $20. So let's say it's like an agency with five clients on board, they're paying like almost $200 a month, basically.

Okay. Okay. So so you've you've gotten that starting point further down. Because I was gonna say that that there should be a bigger difference between the business and the agency plans. They're really close to one another.

The difference between the two is as a business, in the business tier, I'm going to use your tool to get value out of it, and it's gonna be an expense in my company. As an agency, I'm gonna make money off your tool and it's an investment.

Yes. Yeah. And and the difference between the business and the agency would be the price you're paying for business is probably not gonna increase unless you really grow your team out drastically, which is probably won't happen on the marketing side.

We'd probably end up sharing logins before

we Exactly. Yep. So so the business folks would would stick to the 69 a month or so, whereas the agencies basically start at 99 and they just their bill kind of grows as their client base grows, But like by $20 a month per client, which is I think pretty manageable for most agencies. And like the feedback that I got from a lot of people was, it was missing that middle price point. Like I had a lot of I forgot exactly what the old prices were, but I think what happened was it was it started at, like, 29 or 39 a month on the lower kind of limited plan.

And then they had to kind of jump up to $99 a month to get everything else. And and I got a lot of people saying, like, you know, I I've got like two or three people on my team, I've got a couple of websites, I would love something in the middle there around $50 a month. And so that's what the business plan is aimed at. So so I guess the only other question I have on that is like, what do think about the overall price point of of everything here?

I want the agency to be higher, but you might be able to grow people once they get on there, so I can understand starting off a little lower. When I look at the annual billing, which is the default that you're showing, there is a bigger leap from solo to business than there is from business to pro. Solo goes from 29 to 59, which is $30 difference, and then business to pro goes 59 to 79, which doesn't line up with the value that the pro account

I think on the pro side, you get a bigger benefit from the annual. If you look at the monthly, it goes $39.69 99. I didn't want the pro on the annual side to say like, I don't know, like, 89 seemed a little bit weird to show or, like, 84 or, like Yeah. I want I just want with 79. You know?

I I like the exact numbers. Like, like, developer heavy tools that, like, are run by developers. They see, like, $87.13 because that's how the math worked out. Hey.

That's a really, kind of pet peeve of mine. I see a couple of SaaS tools out there that say, like, 24, like, $24.99 per month.

Yeah. I'm all about I go round numbers. I like the premium

of Exactly. I

go $100 a month, $300 a month, $100 more for this, you know, it's like

I usually go with a $9 amount, like the $29.99, but yeah, I don't know.

My guess right now, and it's impossible to know what the hell we're talking about, but my guess is that the majority of the good customers are not gonna be on that solo plan, and that solo plan will effectively just be a starting point to get people in. But that the majority of your business, depending on who you end up attracting, if you end up attracting agencies, then it'll be more heavily weighted toward that. If you end up attracting businesses like Cardhook that are gonna run it for themselves, then I think, you know, the vast majority of your business will be focused on that that business tier.

I do agree that I think the agency plan should probably be priced a bit higher eventually, but then I have to think about like, well, okay, what's it gonna cost on the per account that you add? Like, should should that be 20 or should I just increase that to, like, a 30 per account? Something like that. Because technically, you could you could just get a business account and then just add a couple of $20 a month things to it, and like Right. And what will

you be missing though? You'll be missing the things that only agencies use. The the reports, the feedback stuff, that that those brand reports, that's what the agency is gonna use it for. That that that's how how I view it. I guess I would talk to agencies because I'm not an agency, so I don't know their thinking, but I would think the agency plan should be like a 199.

Because if you're gonna use it, it's gonna be central to the way you run content for your client, and that client's not paying you. They're they're gonna pay you thousands of dollars if you're gonna run that that side of things for them.

The the original pricing that I had, and I had I had like an agency or two actually signed up to this, It was like now I forgot. I think it was, like, $1.99 a month, and that allows up to 10 accounts, up to 10 client accounts on it. And then after that, you start adding.

Yep. Yep. Even $5,199 a month for up to five clients, that's anyone who has more than five clients is gonna be totally happy to pay you $50 for each additional client, because that means they're they're running part of their business on this, and they're definitely charging you know, many many ten, twenty, 30 times more than $50.

So I think that there's definitely room to grow on the agency side, on the higher end. But on the lower end, so there's like a big competitor. I'd say about 50% of the people I talk to are either coming from this competitor or they know of it. And I think we're priced in this very much in the same ballpark as them, give give or take a few options, a few dollars. But and then there's also plenty of people who just use spreadsheets or they use Trello or they use Buffer.

So free or very cheap tools that they can just get by on. And, you know, granted those people probably are not the ideal customers for us, but I I talked to a lot of them and like they are marketers who could get a lot of value out of this. So that it's just something that I'm aware of. Like, I don't I'm not ready to go like a full like freemium plan or anything like that, but, you know, I I need to keep the lower tier like low enough to Yep. Get people to consider it.

Yeah. I think you've got it in a good place. The the solo should just be an entry point. The business should satisfy a typical SaaS company like ours, and then the agency should be for people who are gonna make money off of your tool. So if I if I had to like give my off the cuff advice, I'd say the first two are all good, the business needs to have the analytics integration because a company like ours would demand to use that, and then and then the pro should be a $199 and have the features that you would use if you were making money off of the tool.

Love it. Yeah. The only other, questions I was gonna ask, you know, we could just kinda jump over them. But the trial period for a while, had it at thirty days, and now I put it at fourteen days. I mean, granted, I I don't have a ton of data to go off of.

Right now, it's kind of a hunch. I'm this is like setting up a starting point that I'm gonna learn from and then tweak over time. But right now, I'm going with fourteen days. I figured it I don't know. I I wanna shorten that and and see what happens.

Again, I'm gonna be talking to customers manually, onboarding them. And then I'm currently, I'm not requiring a credit card to start the trial. I think the way that I have it set up is that they'll need to enter their credit card by the end of the trial. I forgot if we already set this up or not, but I think it'll, like if you start to invite a teammate, it'll prompt you for the credit card.

Yeah. I remember that. I liked it.

Something like that. So

You you have to experiment with the credit card upfront or not. I would go for the credit card upfront. I just don't know if I would go for immediately, but I definitely would test it out at some point because even though it might reduce the number of trials. I mean, right now, you have you basically are gonna do the setup, the demo process. So the credit card thing is less important.

I assume you're not gonna ask them for a credit card before they schedule a demo. No. No. So you can you can push push that, you know, that question off.

Cool. Well, over to you. What what's up in here?

Okay. Here's here's an interesting experience. We had a second person right as they started quit. So so this is something that we are coming to terms with. What we're engaged in is an intense endeavor.

Right? We're not crazy, we have a good time, but it's intense. And we've had two people over the past few months take the job, get excited about it, come in, and then right away kind of look around and be like, you know what? This isn't for me. And it's not because we're like

What what roles were they?

One was a marketer, and one was a developer. And and so what that's taught us is we have to like, one person on the team was a little harsh in setting expectations.

Because they just started, I mean, did did they just get another offer that they decided to take? No. Because they Yeah.

You look, it's impossible to know the truth. All we can look at is, you know, what we're doing internally, are we happy with the way we're doing it, and so on. But the biggest thing it's taught us is that we can't stop recruiting just because someone accepted an offer. Right? Because you really wanna stop recruiting because it's not your your main job.

So assuming someone says yes, I'll take the job and I'm starting in three weeks, you go, oh, we're done with that. Found them. Right? Found him, her, whatever. And then they start and they quit and you're like, actually, I should not have assumed that that person was gonna stay on and I should I should kept recruiting.

Yeah. I always leave the job ads open, you know.

Right. And I think we're not very first in the hiring process. So as soon as that painful part is done, we want it to be done and it's taught us, it's kind of like fundraising, like you don't stop talking to investors, the money is in the bank. So you just you just keep meeting with people until it's actually, you know, a done deal. It's just the same thing with the with the employees.

Literally just today. My developer was supposed to start full time work on OpsCount, like he was pulled off doing other client stuff. Supposed to start work this coming Monday. He pings me today saying he had a guy in his office just quit on him with no notice whatsoever. So now my guy can't start for me full time until mid October.

So

Yeah. Painful.

So now so today, I just fired up a new ad for a developer, you know. I gotta get somebody in.

Right. So that's so that that's was one lesson in terms of of hiring that we just painfully learned for the second time, and now I think it'll it'll sink in

Where where was the developer for you? And where was the marketer too?

The the marketer was here in Portland with us, and then the developer was in Slovenia with with the other guys. Yep. So it's

yeah. Local to the other guys?

Local to the other guys, which we were super excited about, and didn't work out. What can you do? What else? So so right now, our challenge is that we we're not going in a straight line up. The trend is nicely up, but we're going in these stair steps, which I think is pretty normal.

But our current reason for the stair steps is we get a bunch of new customers and then we flatten out as we like deal with that influx of customers. It used to be like, woah, nightmare for those customers, now that's no longer the case. Support's actually in a great place, the product's improving and so on, but the marketing is inconsistent. Right? The truth is we don't really do much marketing, but we'll do a partnership, we'll get a bunch of, and then we kind of flatten out, and then we'll go back up.

And so what we're trying to do now is in those periods where you flatten out, that's where the people inside the company are susceptible to bad psychological juju. Because you just came out of a period where everything was a rocket ship and everything's amazing, and when that stops, it's hard to have the perspective of we're still on a rocket ship. It's just a calm period. So everyone's like, oh, this person cancelled, I thought they were going to be awesome, and we're trying to level out not just the marketing to be consistent, but also just the mood of the company to be in a consistent, you know, direction up as opposed to living and dying by the sign ups. So we're just trying to say to ourselves, put your head down, improve the product, improve the service behind the product, and just keep going, keep going, keep going.

So I've been trying

I feel like that's that's my mantra that I've been telling myself for the last three years. Like, well Yeah. Six years really going back to restaurant. It's just constantly like It's getting ups and downs. It's like Keep going.

You know, it's psychological for me as the founder. I think in your case, you've got a bunch of full time committed teammates who I could see how it would also affect their morale. I mean, for for me, it's always been very personal, and I actually shield the team from my stress on, like, sign like, the team knows when we've gone through a period of a lot of cancellations or no new sign ups for a while, but but I don't really share much about that, like on Slack. I'm just like I'm privately like, oh, shit, know, but Yeah.

I almost have to convince myself to be the the person who is affected least by it because it's important for everyone else to to be in a good place. And so I convinced myself to be in a good place so that I could honestly convey that. Right? It's like I feel like I feel like it which is very funny because in in the family business, my my father was the one that did that. So so we were more susceptible to, oh man, this thing didn't go well, what are we gonna do?

And he would be like, let's look at a spreadsheet and look at what we expect to come in over the next six months, and everyone relax. One one thing didn't go up. Okay. Look, this is how it actually looks in reality. Do we need to freak out?

How do we how do we feel based on what's actually happening?

How much are you share like sharing in terms of well, yeah, like I guess overall transparency inside the company, what are you sharing?

So so that that's a big question that I've wrestled with. I I've toyed with like the open book, but I share just about everything except other people's salaries. That's where I think it goes from healthy to dangerous. It might be a personal limitation, It might be a factor of the fact that some people make more than other whatever it is, that that's where I stop, and I'm like, that's actually I I don't feel that that's helpful.

I agree with that. I heard somebody talking about this on a podcast. So, like, everyone knows about how, like, Buffer is super transparent with with everybody's out. Even even to the out we can all go and see Buffer's salary. Right?

Spreadsheet right now. Look at salary and equity value for every single person. And and

But the and and I think the person was saying that, like, this other person was that it gives you an insight into other people's, like, private lives in a way to know how much they make. You know? That's where it kinda crosses the line a little bit, and I and I kind of agreed with that where you know exactly how much your customers make, so you kind of know what their life what goes into their lifestyle, and then it's like, I don't know.

Yes. So so I'm very transparent about MRR growth. We do some screenshots, not too much because it's not all about that, it's about it is about that, but what goes into it, whatever it is, don't overemphasize. I talk about expenses, I talk about cost, I talk about profitability, I talk about where we are, how much money is in the bank, how much we're raising. I'm fully transparent on all that stuff.

But How do you do like, how do you share it? Like, is it in a meeting? Is it you're just posting stuff in Slack? Like, is is there like a regular cadence to it? Like, here's this week's report.

Like, how how does that happen?

We we do stand ups now and and we we that actually turn into real stand ups that are ten minutes to fifteen minutes instead of an hour because it doesn't make sense more with that many people. So we talk about it there, and we also talk about it in person as things come up, and it builds camaraderie. You know, where where let's say I I hired an outsourced oh my god, Brian, we need to talk about this. I don't know if you you liked my tweet the other day. I I

Oh, yeah. I wanna I wanna hear about that.

This is years years What in the

was this company again?

This company is called OfficeEngine.

OfficeEngine.

And all the stuff that I have complained about and that I feel guilty about, and we've been talking about this for years. All the back office, corporate, taxes, forms, state of Connecticut, state of New York, state of Delaware, state of Oregon, all this stuff that I'm allergic to, I have found the answer, man.

I liked it because, I mean, when I saw this, I was like, oh my god. I needed this last week. You know? I spent two days last week. I I had like some, like, 25 fee for not filing quarterly taxes in some state that I no longer have an employee in.

I I had to go to that state's website and try to try to log in to the stupid things just so that I can cancel out my account. Can't log in. I'd like create an account just to cancel it. I I call them up. They're like, I don't know how the online system work.

Oh, they were like, you have to fax us a a written letter asking to close your account. I'm like, how who do I get access to?

Like Right. Everything has a question because nothing is clear. And then you'll do it. Yeah. And then three from today, you'll get another letter with a penalty because you didn't file, and then you have to so this stuff drives all of us out of our minds.

So I I had a call with our buddy Patrick from Price Intelligently from ProfitWell, and we just started talking about this stuff. You know what it was? They came out with a new product inside of ProfitWell called Recognize, that allows you to do like cash recognition, revenue recognition, all this stuff. So I pinged them and I like, yeah, that looks interesting. And he was like, look, this is for much larger companies with much larger issues, but tell me like what you're trying to do.

And I was like, I just want organization. And he was like, alright, I'm gonna tell you, we use this company called OfficeEngine, you're gonna go to their site, it's gonna look too good to be true. Because they're like, we do everything for you and that's it, and it's affordable.

Yeah. I and I I do question that. Like, how how does it work? Because you you still need to like sign papers and and authenticate shit and like

A little bit. A little. So look, I I was like, oh my god, too good to be true. He's like, look, we use them and they're awesome. And a lot of other companies in SF and like VC backed companies, you know, when it's like four 24 year olds running a company, none of them are doing the back office stuff.

Okay?

Okay. So like what what goes into your package? What what do they actually do?

They do I don't even there's no way I can describe it because it's just so so many things.

You're just subscribed to them. They're they tell you they're doing a bunch of stuff, and you don't need to know about it, and that's actually the value that they're giving you.

I have I had a call with them yesterday, are now are now regular check-in, and I was like, yo, what's happening with like the state of Oregon and the state of New York? And the person on the line that was responsible for that were like, I called the state of New York and I talked to the withholding tax section, and then I called the workers compensation, and we talked, we got them this form, and I need you to sign one thing, and we paid them, and it's all good, and then Oregon is it was like three minute update. I was like, you don't understand what you the the words you just said are worth every dollar I pay you times five. They do a bunch. So they moved us they're moving us off of Bench and onto Xero, so real accounting software instead of Bench.

Are they doing your your bookkeeping or no?

They do the bookkeeping. Okay. They do they do accounts payable. So if someone sends me an invoice, I just forward the invoice onto them, and they cut a check. So they set up a bill.com account.

It's a full blown commercial for them. I don't care. This is awesome.

Totally. Alright. And they're running your payroll?

And they and they run your they they run Gusto. So they try to use the systems that you're already using, like, you don't you're not responsible for anything.

I was using Gusto for a while and like, I used to forward Gusto these these like notices that I would get from like these state tax, you know, and I would like literally, I would take a photo of the note of the letter that I got. I would email that to Gusto support. Sometimes they were helpful. I hate to bad mouth companies sometimes, but like there were definitely times where they just they didn't get back, like they didn't get back to me. They just kind of ignored the request.

It's like, I don't know. I thought that's kind of what Gusto does. No? Think

asking too much from

from a company

that does. They do such a ridiculous job at automating payroll and employee onboarding, it's it's ridiculous. Like we just hired someone in Wisconsin and they're starting on Monday, and that process is so easy, you just do it online. Anyway, they take over that. They also do accounts receivable.

So we have a few big customers that pass through invoices and through wire transfers, and I used to just forget that they owed us like 2,500 and then like every three months, I'd be like, oh damn, that company hasn't paid us in a while. Let me email them. So they they they that's gone, and all those invoices come directly out of zero also, so it's all organized. And if I get a notice, I just take a like a scan, I email to them and they'll say, oh this is great, but we think we should contest this thing or or they just send it back on Adobe EchoSign, I just signed it. Oh, I I can't even I can't I can't tell you how fantastic.

I'm working with mostly contractors right now and so I've my whole business is set up around contractors. To be honest, it's it's sometimes it's it's a it's a bit much for me to manage and I get pulled into these like really fucking annoying calls with, you know, government services and things like that. But and I still run my own payroll right now. Like, I pay I just paid everyone today actually. And that's, you know, that's like an hour task that I have to do every two weeks.

And I've got a bookkeeper and she she basically manages my Xero account for me. Going from having, like, some full time employees to mostly contractors and back and forth a few times. Just having full time employees, especially in different states, it adds such a massive layer of administrative work and complexity and all these little, like, traps. I feel like they they're literally, like, setting traps for us to fall into and get some stupid ass penalty for, you know, like like for things that should have been detected or should have been obvious earlier, like

We're reasonable honest people, and it's still so hard to just do what you're supposed to do. So anyway, I I think people who are in the right situation for it should check out this company OfficeEngine. I've been beyond beyond impressed. I was prepared to pay three to four times what they quoted me. I was a 100% set like this is definitely worth whatever, you know.

And it was like three to four times what they quoted. And then so what they do, they're very smart, they have a relatively low entry point, and then it's then you add, you know, x amount per employee. So that as you get more successful and make more money and hire more people, then you pay them more because they're doing more work. But the entry point in, at that time, I think we had five full time employees, and so we just paid times five, which is reasonable. And then as you grow, you pay more.

I was like, this is ridiculous. You guys got me, you know. I'm gonna get in early and pay this low entry point, and then over time as we get to twenty and thirty people, I'll pay more, I'll be happy to pay more. Totally. Yep.

Awesome, dude. Well, we'll have to send them an invoice for this little ad that we just gave them. So

That's awesome. I'm happy to do it. So I I think you you have a hard stop right now.

Yeah. I gotta I gotta run. Yeah. Good to catch up.

We'll do it again next week. Actually, I won't be. I'll be in Vancouver, Canada next week for another one of those ecommerce classes.

Ah, nice.

Yeah. Cool. Alright, man.

Alright. Well, yep. Talk soon.

Yep. Have a great weekend.

Later.